House clerk who had religious 'moment' during government shutdown vote tries to 'set record straight'

FILE: October 15, 2013: A statue of Alexander Hamilton being cleaned in the Rotunda on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (REUTERS)

The House stenographer removed from the chamber floor last fall after grabbing a microphone and talking about God is attempting to clarify her actions in a video obtained exclusively by Fox News in which she says she didn’t “lose her mind” or “have a breakdown.”

The clerk, Dianne Reidy, made the remarks in her first public statement since the Oct. 17, 2013, incident that brought a bizarre end to the televised vote to reopen the government after a shutdown and raise the debt ceiling.

The YouTube video features Reidy’s explanation about taking the turned-off microphone from the reading clerk’s lectern on the dais of the House chamber.

Reidy, who has since been fired, says that the spirit of the Lord spoke through her, telling her in advance that she was going to speak somewhere in the House chamber during the big vote.

The 38-minute video -- titled “Dianne’s Testimony” -- shows Reidy and husband Dan sitting on a couch with a single page of notes.

Dan speaks for the first several minutes, citing Galatians 6:7 and Mark 3:25 in the Bible. He also says the video is to “explain what took place in Dianne’s life and our lives last fall.”

They acknowledge the difficulty in finding video or audio tape to clarify what Reidy said inside the chamber because the microphones are off during a vote. But the Reidys’ video include video captured in the hall apparently by the Chicago Sun-Times in which most of her rant can be heard.

“I remember getting up to the podium and after saying, ‘God will not be mocked.’ I don’t have a memory of anything else that was said that evening until I was escorted off the floor,” Reidy says in the video. “I knew that God was going to speak through me, and I knew it was going to be during the vote, raising the debt ceiling level and ending the government shutdown.”

Says her husband: “We believe it was Dianne that was being carried along by the spirit of God in speaking to the representatives that evening. … Dianne and I are both Bible-believing Christians.”

Reidy said she was taken to George Washington University Hospital where a resident diagnosed the incident as anxiety and a religious experience. However, her doctor the next day said she suffered from psychosis.